Category Archives: SEO

Those All Important Keywords

The Key of my mind...Creative Commons License photo credit: ul_Marga

Keywords. Now, they have been a real stumbling block for me. I can generate lists of keywords. Even I know where to find the Google Keyword Tool and to enter terms in to find more terms. Making sense of keywords and how to use them, that has been my stumbling point.

I can’t just blow the concept off though. Keywords are the building blocks of search engines. When people enter terms in the search engines, those keywords determine what sites are going to be found and displayed for the person’s search. Their relevancy on each site determines which sites will be displayed first. Therein lies my stumbling block.

How do I move that list of keywords from list to relevancy?

I’ve read lots of material about keywords, much of it really well written yet, it seemed most writers just left it up to me to understand them so well, that I’d just know the right keywords to use. I’d know which ones I’d want to optimize for. I really had started to think I was a bit thick, I always seemed to hit the wall.

I often opted for throw a bunch of keywords at the wall and hope something stuck. Not a very effective use of time and resources.

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Google Wonder Wheel & Other Search Fun

Just finished reading a neat article over at Search Engine Land on some search tools. The article is part of a series on PPC (Pay Per Click) they have been running. The article provides an overview of search engine tools; social monitoring platforms like Twitter, Technorati and Social Mention; SEO tools includes an overview of who SEOMoz’s tool suite can be used for paid search campaigns and industry intelligence sources like eMarketer, comScore and Marketing Sherpa.

Google Wonder Wheel

What really grabbed my attention was the pointer to the Google Wonder Wheel. All this time I’ve been using Google for search and never knew this little gem was there. The wonder wheel provides a visual display of some other search terms which your search results contains. A great way to drill down to more specific data when exploring for article ideas for example.

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Speed Matters With Google

I love it when I read an article which actually leads me to learn something. Search Engine Land reports today that Google now includes page speed as a factor when ranking your site. How important a factor speed is, isn’t yet determined.

As much as possible, I’ve always tried to keep page speed as quick as possible. What you might not notice on a broadband connection, your visitors on dialup or slow satellite connections sure will.

I’ve done some web design in the past so I’m tend to remember to pay attention to things like optimising graphics or trying to keep them to a minimum. On most of the blogs I have, I avoid using pictures unless there is a value added element to them. I know, some of the gurus will tell you to use pictures on most of your posts.

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When to Monetize Your Blog?

Most people start blogging as a hobbies and a way to share their interest with friends and others on the web. Still others start their blogs as a source of income tight from the get go.

In order to generate income from your blog or website, you need to generate traffic. The greater the traffic, the greater effect your monetizing will have. You also need to approach monetizing with care. You want visitors drawn into the site for what you offer, not turned off by your monetizing.

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Five Fundamental Questions for Keyword Research

I’ve read articles and ebooks of all descriptions to try to get my head around doing effective keyword research. Somehow the sense of having a method that I could use, wash, rinse and repeat always seemed to allude me. I  was beginning to think it was just me and my wonderful mental block that was the problem.

Today I ran across Mark Jackson’s article over on Search Engine Watch laying out five fundamental questions to use for keyword research. Now there’s some questions which make sense:

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Making Copywriting And Seo Coexist

When it comes to making sales on the Internet, it seems that copywriters and search engine optimization experts are always at odds with each other.

You see, one group wants the sales letter to be absolutely perfect to make maximum sales, and the other group wants the page to be optimized perfectly for the search engines to send free traffic their way.

I remember my first experience with a search engine optimization firm. I had a site that was designed to sell sunglasses, and I’d just finished writing all the sales letter for the different types of sunglasses available. At the time pay per click advertising was a brand new concept, so I wasn’t using it. I wanted to get the free search engine traffic available from sites like Yahoo and Google, so I hired some SEO experts to make my site perform better in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). I gave them access to all my pages so they could optimize everything as necessary.

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